Lesson 07: American Exceptionalism and Bias

**Special guest lecturer Suzy Hansen will be co-teaching this class with me**

This class will explore the roots of American exceptionalism and bias in postwar ideas of modernity, and particularly in the concept of “modernization theory.” Many Americans don’t realize that the vocabulary they use to discuss foreign countries was established for them in the decades just after World War II, when the United States was asserting itself as a world power. Modernization theory was eventually discredited but its impact was enormous. As a result, journalists – even, sometimes, non-American journalists – risk looking at foreign countries within this artificial and antiquated framework. Understanding the history of these ideas, and how they contributed to Americans’ conception of themselves in the world, will help break down assumptions and biases that prevent observers from seeing a foreign country or community on its own terms.

Assignments

Reading assignment:

  • Suzy Hansen, Notes on a Foreign Country, “Money and Military coups: The Arab World and Turkey” (Chapter 5, pp. 161-189) 
  • Hemant Shah, The Production of Modernization, pp.1-29 (in shared drive)
  • Michael Hunt, Ideology and US Foreign Policy, pp. 171-198 (in shared drive) 
  • Annabel Jane Wharton,Building the Cold War, Introduction (on reserve)
  • Bruce Cumings, “A Murderous History of Korea,” London Review of Books (on reserve) OPTIONAL

Listening assignment:

Written assignment:

NONE!

Agenda
  • REVIEW OF LESSON 6
  • STUDENT LED DISCUSSION OF HANSEN CHAPTER 5
  • DISCUSSION OF OTHER READINGS
  • IN CLASS EXERCISE
Review of Previous Lesson
  • Ask students what their main takeaways were from the previous lesson
  • Ask students what they liked, didn’t like, and what surprised them as they looked for artistic works to add to their crash course list
Student Led Discussion of Hansen Chapter 5

Turn over discussion to the two students who have signed up to lead the class through this chapter. They must summarize the main points and then frame the discussion.

Discussion of Other Readings
  • Hemant Shah, The Production of Modernization, pp.1-29 (in shared drive)
  • Michael Hunt, Ideology and US Foreign Policy, pp. 171-198 (in shared drive) 
  • Annabel Jane Wharton,Building the Cold War, Introduction (on reserve)
  • Bruce Cumings, “A Murderous History of Korea,” London Review of Books (on reserve) OPTIONAL
  • “Becoming America,” The Through Line (NPR podcast)

Let’s revisit Hansen’s book p. 141: 

The reason Kalyvas’s explanation appealed to me, I later realized, was because it recalled the language of modernization theory, whose intellectual proponents thought of postcolonial nations as rebellious adolescents. According to Nils Gilman, the image of foreign nations as “‘young’ or ‘immature’ appears throughout the literature on modernization.” At the time of my interview with Kalyvas I hadn’t known anything about modernization theory. But I hadn’t needed to. Mainstream newspapers such as The New York Times, a million television news broadcasts, likely even most of my college history courses all used the same language of the maturity and immaturity of nations. That rhetoric was not only condescending, but a kind of Trojan horse: it implied progress and hope—You, young Greece, may be a miserable mess now, but you, too, will grow up one day to be just like us—and so seemed somewhat harmless. But in the process weren’t all foreign countries condemned to failure so that the United States could remain the ideal? These countries would be selected as candidates in need of endless salvation by the United States—and, by extension, me, one of its foreign journalists asking that patronizing question, “Whatever in the devil went wrong here, guys?”

  • WHAT DO THE READINGS THIS WEEK TELL US ABOUT HOW AND WHERE THE LANGUAGE OF MODERNIZATION THEORY COMES FROM?
  • HOW HAS THIS SEEPED INTO YOUR OWN VIEWS ABOUT OTHER COUNTRIES?
  • HOW DOES THIS AFFECT JOURNALISM? FROM STORY CHOICE TO STORY FRAMING TO HOW IT’S REPORTED AND THE LANGUAGE USED IN FINAL PRODUCT?
  • HOW WILL WHAT YOU NOW KNOW ABOUT MODERNIZATION THEORY AND LANGUAGE CHANGE YOUR PRACTICE?